Note: This is meant as a branch off of here. Read that page first.
A loud “eww” went unheard in the room that seems to exist outside time and space. Showing that naked body resembling yours was totally uncalled for. After a quick panicked fiddling with the controls it was replaced with a different character, a human female with the default settings. Not the right character, but at least not as much of an eye sore. A closer look at the options revealed five playable races, Human, Elf, Dwarf, Orc and Catfolk along with some variations like heaventouched. It looked D&D-inspired but not a direct rip-off. Why can’t an Orc be heaventouched? No matter. Time to check them out.
Humans are one of the shortest lived, but most prolific breeders in the Realms. Humans have a broader affinity for skills than other races. No special bonuses to race. Humans get five points to distribute per level.
Right, the versatile Humans. No special abilities but good to make any build work. Why the focus on breeding? Never mind.
Helltouched are not a true species of their own, but rather an echo of some distant ancestor’s transgression. Helltouched can be born to parents of any race ...
"It even says there: Helltouched can be of any race!" you exclaim. Slight buyer's remorse sets in. Someone should have playtested this properly. The game was supposed to be super immersive. Despite the non-disclosure agreements all players have to sign the embargo didn't last long; "The Realm" is the talk in all gamer communities and people who played it swore it was ridiculously realistic and immersive. The gameplay is supposedly lacking, but it should still be good for its roleplay experience alone you thought. And now thinking back people did complain about the character creation screen a lot but said once you get into the actual game it's great.
Of course there were also the other rumors. Rumors of people disappearing. Quite a few people who played the game and submitted a blog post daily disappeared from the internet after only a few entries, or so conspiracy nuts claimed. It's probably the embargo. Maybe those wavers I signed weren't the usual end user license agreement after all. Of course you didn't actually read anything they made you sign. It is difficult to know what to think when you have opinions ranging from this being the game of the century to this game literally destroying your soul, so you just dismiss the concerns and see for yourself. Plus people either don't disappear or nobody knows about it. The ones who tell you not to play are the same people who didn't get a key after all. Also you didn't plan on publishing your thoughts on the game anyways, so none of this matters to you. Having thought enough about real world squabbles you decide that it's time to go over the skills first and picking a fitting race later. There are a lot of them in a long list. You pick one at random.
Persuasion: The art of getting people to do things they don't want to do and simultaneously not pissing them off. A master of Persuasion could convince a demon to forsake its evil ways or an angel to fall from grace.
Associated Attribute: Charisma.
How is that supposed to work? you wonder. You try to persuade someone and it would do a roll in the background to determine success or failure? And it doesn't really matter what you say? "Ugh, this sucks. This is not nearly as great as people described it." All the magic disappears once you know how it works and this was just too much on the nose. Let's try something else.
Cooking: The art of turning raw ingredients into a delicious meal. While anyone can make some sort of food, a master of Cooking can turn mediocre sources into a fine meal that boosts morale and nutritiousness.
Associated Attributes: Senses and Intuition
Wait, I thought you were supposed to be a chosen hero, not a cook in this. I guess I'll save the world making the greatest chocolate cake the evil monsters have ever seen! You sigh. There were just so many skills and you can feel yourself lose interest. This isn't the game you wanted to play. You wanted to be a hero, interact with people and grow as a person, not do research to figure out the mechanics behind each skill. You briefly consider logging out and looking up a build, but end up deciding against it. You don't feel like optimizing builds either and you haven't even looked at places and classes yet. You just want to play the game.
You look over other skills and find various for magic, armor, weapons, crafting and domestic uses. You generally like mages, but those tend to be difficult to play when you don't know what you're doing and for new games it's usually better to pick a warrior. It's a bit boring, but hitting things with your giant warhammer is just so much simpler than figuring out the spell system. Though making a good warrior with all these skills seems even more complicated than just picking a school of magic and making a mage.
Ok, this settles it. You take a step back from the character creation screen, minimizing window after window until you feel like you have control of the situation again. Where is it? You search through the interface. 'Random Character', if I was a button with that title, where would I be? After you've almost given up you suddenly find it, fairly prominent, too, in the bottom right of the character creation menu where it belongs. Well, here goes nothing. RNJesus, take the wheel! You press the button and expect a random character to be shown, ready to re-roll a couple of times until something interesting comes up, but instead the game shows you a popup.
Warning: Your character shapes not only your own future but the destiny of The Realm as a whole and will have lasting consequences. This action cannot be undone. Are you sure you wish to continue?
There is a ginormous 'no' and a tiny 'yes' button underneath the big red warning. Apparently you are not supposed to make a random character. Or the description is just overly dramatic like all the other descriptions in this game. "Shoddy writing" you mumble as you press the yes button. One after another you see the popup menu, the character creation screens and your character fade away. Just as you wonder if the game crashed your consciousness follows the menus, fading away into darkness.
A moment later a formless entity does something that can closest be described as a chuckle. "The Chosen has chosen not to choose." The chuckle grows into a laughter. "This will be interesting!"